Blueprint and 7Sage take very different approaches for setting up this game. Blueprint suggests making a tiered ordering game, while 7Sage does not use tiers. This leaves me confused as to which set up is better, and when to recognize a scenario as to when to actually set up a tiered game. Any tips?

This game does use a tiered ordering format, but making it two tiered is mainly useful in question 3. The answers to the rest of the questions can be determined without making a tiered master game board. This game's rules don't force any of the variables into definitive places, so it's best to just make a note of where variables can/can't go instead of writing out several hypothetical game boards.